by Anne Perry
No wonder such an anger still burned inside her at what she perceived to be incompetence in medical administration. How she and Monk had quarreled! Evan smiled even as he thought of it. And yet when Monk had faced the worst crisis in his life it had been she who had stood beside him, she who had refused to let him give in, had fought for him when it looked as if he could not win, and worst of all, did not deserve to.
She must have rebelled against rolling bandages, sweeping floors and carrying coals when she was capable of so much more, and had done it in the field surgeons’ tents when all the doctors were already doing all they could. She had wanted to reform so much, and the eagerness had got in her way.
They were at the end of the ward now, and Riley had stopped by a bed where lay a young man, white-faced, motionless. Only the clouding of his breath on a glass could have told if he was still alive. There was nothing for the eye to see.
Evan recognized him from the alley. The features were the same, the curve of eyelid, the almost-black hair, rather long nose, sensitive mouth. The bruising did not hide that, and the blood had been cleared away. Evan found himself willing the young man to live, aching with the tension in his own body, as if by strength of his feeling he could make it happen—and yet at the same time he was concerned about the pain the young man would feel when he woke.
Who was he—R. Duff? Was the older man related to him? And what had happened in that alley? Why had they been there? What appetite had taken them to such a place on a January night?
“Give me the trousers,” Evan whispered, a wave of horror and revulsion returning to him. “I’ll take them to the tailor.”
“You’d be better with the coat,” Riley replied. “It’s got the label on it, and there’s less blood.”
“Less blood? The other man’s coat was soaked in it.”
“I know.” Riley shrugged his thin shoulders. “With this one it’s the trousers. Maybe they all went down together in a scrum. But if you want the tailor to be fit for anything, take the jacket. No need to give the poor man a turn.”
Evan took the jacket after he had examined both pieces. Like the dead man’s clothes, they were torn in several places, filthy with mud and effluent from the gutter, and stained with blood on coat sleeves and tails, and the trousers were sodden.
Evan left the hospital horrified, exhausted in mind and spirit as well as body, and now so cold he could not stop shivering. He took a hansom home to his rooms. He would not get in an omnibus with that dreadful jacket, and he had no wish to sit among other people, decent people at the end of their day’s work, who had no idea of what he had seen and felt or of the young man in St. Thomas’s who might or might not awake again.
He found the tailor at nine o’clock. He spoke personally to Mr. Jiggs of Jiggs and Muldrew, a rotund man who needed all his own art to disguise his ample stomach and rather short legs.
“What may I do for you, sir?” he said with some distaste as he saw the parcel under Evan’s arm. He disapproved of gentlemen who bundled up clothes. It was no way to treat a highly crafted piece of workmanship.
Evan had no time or mood for catering to anyone’s sensitivities.
“Do you have a client by the name of R. Duff, Mr. Jiggs?” he asked bluntly.
“My client list is a matter of confidence, sir—”
“This is a case of murder,” Evan snapped, sounding more like Monk than his own usually soft-spoken self. “The owner of this suit is lying at death’s door in St. Thomas’s. Another man, who also wore a suit with your label in it, is in the morgue. I do not know who they are … other than this …” He ignored Jiggs’s pasty face and wide eyes. “If you can tell me, then I demand that you do so.” He spilled the jacket onto the tailor’s table.
Jiggs started backwards as if the garment was alive and dangerous.
“Will you look at it, please,” Evan commanded.
“Oh, my God!” Mr. Jiggs put a clammy hand to his brow. “Whatever happened?”
“I don’t know yet,” Evan answered a trifle more gently. “Will you please look at that jacket and tell me if you know for whom you made it?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. I always know my gentlemen, sir.” Gingerly Mr. Jiggs unfolded the coat only sufficiently to see his own label. He glanced at it, touched the cloth with his forefinger, then looked at Evan. “I made that suit for young Mr. Rhys Duff, of Ebury Street, sir.” He looked extremely pale. “I am very sorry indeed that he seems to have met with a disaster. It truly grieves me, sir.”
Evan bit his lip. “I’m sure. Did you also make a suit in a brown wool for another gentleman, possibly related to him? This man would be in his middle fifties, average height, quite solidly built. He had gray hair, rather fairer than Rhys Duff’s, I should think.”
“Yes sir.” Jiggs took a shaky breath. “I made several suits for Mr. Leighton Duff; he’s Master Rhys’s father. I fear it may be he you are describing. Was he injured also?”
“I am afraid he is dead, Mr. Jiggs. Can you tell me the number in Ebury Street. I am obliged to inform his family.”
“Oh—why, of course. How very terrible. I wish there were some way I could assist.” The tailor stepped back as he said it, but there was a look of acute distress in his face, and Evan was disposed to believe him, at least in part.
“The number in Ebury Street?” he repeated.
“Yes … yes. I think it is thirty-four, if my memory serves, but I’ll look in my books. Yes, of course I will.”
Evan did not go straight to Ebury Street. First he returned to St. Thomas’s. There was a sense in which it would be kinder to the family if he could tell them at least that Rhys Duff was still alive, perhaps conscious. And if the young man could speak, maybe he could tell them what had happened, and Evan would have to ask fewer questions.
And there was part of him which was simply not ready yet to go and tell some woman that her husband was dead and her son might or might not survive, and no one knew yet in what degree of injury, pain or disability.
He found Riley straightaway, looking as if he had been there all night. Certainly he seemed to be wearing the same clothes with precisely the same wrinkles and bloodstains on them.
“He’s still alive,” he said as soon as he saw Evan and before Evan could ask. “He stirred a bit about an hour ago. Let’s go and see if he’s come around.” And he set off with a long-legged stride as if he too were eager to know.
The ward was busy. Two young doctors were changing bandages and examining wounds. A nurse who looked no more than fifteen or sixteen was carrying buckets of slops, her shoulders bent as she strove to keep the buckets off the floor. An elderly woman struggled with a bucket of coals and Evan offered to take them from her, but she refused, looking nervously at Riley. Another nurse gathered up soiled laundry and brushed past them with her face averted. Riley seemed hardly to notice; his attention was solely upon the patients.
Evan followed him to the end of the ward, where he saw with a rush of relief, overtaken instantly by anxiety, that Rhys Duff lay motionless on his back, but his eyes were open—large, dark eyes which stared up at the ceiling and seemed to see only horror.
Riley stopped by the bed and looked at his patient with some concern.
“Good morning, Mr. Duff,” he said gently. “You are in St. Thomas’s Hospital. My name is Riley. How are you feeling?”
Rhys Duff rolled his head very slightly until his eyes were focusing on Riley.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Duff?” Riley repeated.
Rhys opened his mouth, his lips moved, but there was no sound whatever.
“Does your throat hurt?” Riley asked with a frown. It was obviously not something he had expected.
Rhys stared at him.
“Does your throat hurt?” Riley asked again. “Nod if it does.”
Very slowly Rhys shook his head. He looked faintly surprised.
Riley put his hand on Rhys’s slender wrist above the bandaging of his broken hand. The other, similarly splinted a
nd bound, lay on the cover.
“Can you speak, Mr. Duff?” Riley asked very softly.
Rhys opened his mouth again, and again no sound came.
Riley waited.
Rhys’s eyes were filled with terrible memory; fear and pain held him transfixed. Momentarily his head moved from side to side in denial. He could not speak.
Riley turned to Evan. “I’m sorry, you’ll get nothing from him yet. He may be well enough to answer yes and no tomorrow, but he may not. At the moment he’s too shocked for you to bother him at all. For certain, he can’t talk to you or describe anyone. And it will be weeks before he can hold a pen—if his hands mend well enough ever.”
Evan hesitated. He needed desperately to know what had happened, but he was torn with pity for this unbearably injured boy. He wished he had his father’s faith to help him understand how such things could happen. Why was there not some justice to prevent it? He did not have a blind belief to soothe either his anger or his pity.
Nor did he have Hester’s capacity to provide the practical help which would have eased the aching helplessness inside him.
Perhaps the nearest he could strive for was Monk’s dedication to pursuing truth.
“Do you know who did this to you, Mr. Duff?” he asked, speaking over Riley.
Rhys shut his eyes and again shook his head. If he had any memory, he was choosing to close it out as too monstrous to bear.
“I think you should leave now, Sergeant,” Riley said with an edge to his voice. “He can’t tell you anything.”
Evan acknowledged the truth of it, and with one last look at the ashen face of the young man lying in the bed, he turned and went about the only duty he dreaded more.
Ebury Street was quiet and elegant in the cold morning air. There was a slick of ice on the pavements and housemaids were indisposed to linger in gossip. The two or three people Evan saw all kept moving, whisking dusters and mopheads out of windows and in again as quickly as possible. An errand boy scampered up steps and rang a bell with fingers clumsy with cold.
Evan found number thirty-four and, unconsciously copying Monk, he went to the front door. Anyway, news such as he had should not go through the kitchens first.
The bell was answered by a parlormaid in a smart uniform. Her starched linen and lace immediately proclaimed a household of better financial standing than the clothes worn by the dead man suggested.
“Yes sir?”
“Good morning. I am Police Sergeant Evan. Does a Mr. Leighton Duff live here?”
“Yes sir, but he isn’t home at the moment.” She said it with some anxiety. It was not a piece of information she would normally have offered to a caller, even though she knew it to be true. She looked at his face, and perhaps read the weariness and sadness in it. “Is everything all right, sir?”
“No, I’m afraid it isn’t. Is there a Mrs. Duff?”
Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes filled with alarm, but she did not scream.
“You had better warn her lady’s maid and perhaps the butler. I am afraid I have very bad news.”
Silently she opened the door wider and let him in.
A butler with thin, graying hair came from the back of the hallway, frowning.
“Who is the gentleman, Janet?” He turned to Evan. “Good morning, sir. May I be of assistance to you? I am afraid Mr. Duff is not at home at present, and Mrs. Duff is not receiving.” He was less sensitive to Evan’s expression than the maid had been.
“I am from the police,” Evan repeated. “I have extremely bad news to tell Mrs. Duff. I’m very sorry. Perhaps you should remain in case she needs some assistance. Possibly you might send a messenger for your family doctor.”
“What … what has happened?” Now the butler looked thoroughly horrified.
“I am afraid that Mr. Leighton Duff and Mr. Rhys Duff have met with violence. Mr. Rhys is in St. Thomas’s Hospital in a very serious condition.”
The butler gulped. “And … and Mr.… Mr. Leighton Duff?”
“I am afraid he is dead.”
“Oh dear … I …” He swayed a little where he stood in the magnificent hallway with its carved staircase, aspidistras in stone urns and brass umbrella stand with silver-topped canes in it.
“You’d better sit down a minute, Mr. Wharmby,” Janet said with sympathy.
Wharmby straightened himself, but he looked very pallid. “Certainly not! Whatever next? It is my duty to look after poor Mrs. Duff in every way possible, as it is yours. Go and get Alfred to fetch Dr. Wade. I shall inform Madam that there is someone to see her. You might return with a decanter of brandy … just in case some restorative is needed.”
But it was not. Sylvestra Duff sat motionless in the large chair in the morning room, her face bloodlessly white under her dark hair with its pronounced widow’s peak. She was not immediately beautiful—her face was too long, too aquiline, her nose delicately flared, her eyes almost black—but she had a distinction which became more marked the longer one was with her. Her voice was low and very measured. In other circumstances it would have been lovely. Now she was too shattered by horror and grief to speak in anything but broken fractions of sentences.
“How …” she started. “Where? Where did you say?”
“In one of the back streets of an area known as St. Giles,” Evan answered gently, moderating the truth a little. He wished there were some way she would never have to know the full facts.
“St. Giles?” It seemed to mean very little to her. He studied her face, the smooth, high-boned cheeks and curved brow. He thought he saw a slight tightening, but it could have been no more than a change in the light as she turned towards him.
“It is a few hundred yards off Regent Street, towards Aldgate.”
“Aldgate?” she said with a frown.
“Where did he say he was going, Mrs. Duff?” he asked.
“He didn’t say.”
“Perhaps you would tell me all you can recall of yesterday.”
She shook her head very slowly. “No … no, that can wait. First I must go to my son. I must … I must be with him. You said he is very badly hurt?”
“I am afraid so. But he is in the best hands possible.” He leaned a little towards her. “You can do no more for him at present,” he said earnestly. “It is best he rests. He is not fully sensible most of the time. No doubt the doctor will give him herbs and sedatives to ease his pain and help him to heal.”
“Are you trying to spare my feelings, Sergeant? I assure you, it is not necessary. I must be where I can do the most good, that is the only thing which will be of any comfort to me.” She looked at him very directly. She had amazing eyes; their darkness almost concealed her emotions and made her a peculiarly private woman. He imagined the great Spanish aristocrats might have looked something like that: proud, secretive, hiding their vulnerability.
“No, Mrs. Duff,” he said. “I was trying to find out as much as I can from you about what occurred yesterday while it is fresh in your mind, before you are fully occupied with your son. At the moment it is Dr. Riley’s help he needs. I need yours.”
“You are very direct, Sergeant.”
He did not know if it was a criticism or simply an observation. Her voice was without expression. She was too profoundly shocked from the reality of what he had told her to touch anything but the surface of her mind. She sat upright, her back rigid, shoulders stiff, her hands unmoving in her lap. He imagined if he touched them he would find them locked together, unbending.
“I am sorry. It seems not the time for niceties. This matters far too much. Did your husband and son leave the house together?”
“No. No … Rhys left first. I did not see him go.”
“And your husband?”
“Yes … yes, I saw him leave. Of course.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No … no. He quite often went out in the evening … to his club. It is a very usual thing for a gentleman to do. Business, as well as pleasure, depend
s upon social acquaintances. He did not say … specifically.”
He was not sure why, but he did not entirely believe her. Was it possible she was aware that her husband had frequented certain dubious places, perhaps even that he’d used prostitutes? Such behavior was tacitly accepted by many wives, even though they would have been shocked if anyone had been vulgar and insensitive enough to speak it. Everyone was aware of bodily functions. No one referred to them; it was both indelicate and unnecessary.
“How was he dressed, ma’am?”
Her arched eyebrows rose. “Dressed? Presumably as you found him, Sergeant. What do you mean?”
“Did he have a watch, Mrs. Duff?”
“A watch? Yes. Oh, I see. He was … robbed. Yes, he had a very fine gold watch. It was not on him?”
“No. Was he in the habit of carrying much money with him?”
“I don’t know. I can ask Bridlaw, his valet. He could probably tell you. Does it matter?”
“It might.” Evan was puzzled. “Do you know if he was wearing his gold watch yesterday when he left?” It seemed a strange and rather perverse thing to go into St. Giles, for whatever reason, wearing a conspicuously expensive article like a gold watch, so easily visible. It almost invited robbery. Was he lost? Was he perhaps taken there against his will? “Did he mention meeting anyone?”
“No.” She was quite certain.
“And the watch?” he prompted.
“Yes. I believe he was wearing it.” She stared at him intently. “He almost always did. He was very fond of it. I think I would have noticed were he without it. I remember now he wore a brown suit. Not his best at all—in fact, rather an inferior one. He had it made for the most casual wear, weekends and so forth.”
“And yet the night he went out was a Wednesday,” Evan reminded her.
“Then he must have been planning a casual evening,” she replied bluntly. “Why do you ask, Sergeant? What difference does it make now? He was not … murdered … because of what he wore!”
“I was trying to deduce where he intended to go, Mrs. Duff. St. Giles is not an area where we would expect to find a gentleman of Mr. Duff’s means and social standing. If I knew why he was there, or with whom, I would be a great deal closer to knowing what happened to him.”